My Acolyte Journey: 2014.25

Extraordinary
Clean Bandit. This is probably about love, but there really isn't much proof for that. The only real love clichés I could spot were here:

Have you seen her, the grass is greener/ To let me pass you by would be a shame/ If she's your only then why are you lonely? [Italics supplied]

And that's not much to go on. Dissatisfaction and loss in context of a woman does not equal love. Instead, the surface text is clear: the singer feels intensely about this person, but knows that he or she has chosen a different path, possibly forever. It's a song yelled into someone's back as they walk away. There's no response and no submission from this mysterious other person, and the lyricist becomes increasingly desperate and overwhelmingly stark.

Something extraordinary/ Something real/ To fill my days and nights with something/ That I can feel (I can feel)

Nobody's talking back when we cry in desperation. Everything we want walks away. All our hard work slips through our fingers and even the little things seem extraordinary when they're finally real. Percy Shelley knows about this.

More important (perhaps) is the method of delivery. I haven't even listened to the song yet, but I can tell you this: as reckless as love is, this song is safe.

"something in the way" she moves "my door is open" "I don't know how much more I can take" "drift away" as metaphor for breakup "running out of time" "two wrongs can['t] make it right" "grass is greener" on the other side "she's your [one and] only" "in your arms tonight"

And those are just the biggest cultural verbal touchstones. I don't know how I feel about such lazy (seeming) use of language. I much prefer "in the bag (like groceries)," a style of cliché that abuses your expectation in a new way to make a point. So, honestly: perhaps that's why the other person left. That other person was also looking for "something extraordinary/something real," and found instead this faker trying to say all the right things and play safe. Sadly, by the time the other person left, the lyricist was writing smashing stuff without clichés in the refrain/chorus/bridge. Too bad.
The video, now that I've seen it, doesn't play to the story. It's foreign countries and destroying instruments and Sharna Bass + Grace Chatto in swimsuits. It's beautiful--perhaps the most aesthetically pleasing combination of video and song yet. But it lacks the interest of 3005 and the story of Never Catch Me.
Because it's so (. . . nice?) watching/listening to the song puts me in a light mood, like I don't mind being in this place. I like the steel drum and the strings/piano. I like the way it makes me absent-minded, even though I don't parse the words.
I think I would have to like the whole album to buy this.